The use of live fire exercises, in which army or other armed forces personnel use fully functioning weapons systems, is well established. Live fire exercises can be used to provide realistic training scenarios, but also present obvious dangers. Live fire exercises present opportunities for checking that weapons systems function correctly and allow users, such as soldiers, to practice using real weapons in situations that are more realistic than firing ranges. Also, training with live ammunition prevents the situation where a soldier's first experience of live firing is in a real combat situation from occurring.
Live fire exercises are not limited to army training exercises. Other branches of the armed forces use live fire exercises and the principles can be extended to other situations, including civilian applications.
It is known to use live missiles and torpedoes in naval training exercises and trials. For example, missiles can be fired at a ship to check the effectiveness of mechanisms for tracking and destroying such missiles. Clearly, there are substantial safety and costs issues to address before such a live firing regime is likely to be approved.
A first known approach for firing live missiles at a ship involves the use of a dummy ship. Such a ship may be fitted with appropriate anti-missile technology, but crucially requires no personnel to be on board, thereby eliminating the risk to human life. This approach has two clear disadvantages. First, if the anti-missile defences are unsuccessful, the dummy ship is likely to be damaged. This would be expensive, particularly if sophisticated defensive weapons systems are damaged. A second disadvantage with this system is that if no personnel are on-board, then there is no exposure of such personnel to the effects of an in-coming missile.
A second known approach is to use over-firing; such an arrangement is shown in FIG. 1. FIG. 1 shows a ship 10 and a missile launch site 12. The trajectory of the missile is indicated by the curve 14. During the exercise, the anti-missile defences of the ship 10 attempt to destroy the missile using an anti-missile weapon, indicated schematically by the arrow 16. If the anti-missile defences of the ship 10 are ineffective, the missile continues over the ship and lands harmlessly, as indicated by the trajectory 18.
Thus, over-firing involves firing a missile or other projectile at a target, such as a ship, so that the missile or projectile passes over the ship and lands safely on the other side. This approach enables personnel to be on board the ship and enables the on-board systems to be used in a realistic manner to attempt to destroy the incoming missile. However, the increased realism provided by enabling personnel to stay on board is tempered by the absence of the reality of the missile approaching the ship.
A third approach is to direct a missile towards a ship but to program its route so that it moves away from the ship during the later stages of its approach. FIG. 2 shows such an arrangement, including a ship 20 and a missile launch site 22. A missile is fired along trajectory 24 that initially directs the missile towards the ship 20. The anti-missile technology of the ship has an opportunity to destroy the missile as indicated schematically by the arrow 26. If the anti-missile technology is not effective to destroy the missile, the trajectory 24 is programmed such that missile moves away from the ship in a safe manner, as shown in FIG. 2.
Again, the arrangement described with reference to FIG. 2 lacks realism. Furthermore, many existing pre-programmed or remote control systems use missiles or other vehicles/objects that operate much more slowly than “real” incoming missiles and often have a larger size and a different visual, radar, electronic and thermal signature, thereby reducing the realism of the exercise. A further problem with such programming is that the guidance software may need to be disclosed to third parties using or developing the missile training system; this may be unacceptable for national security reasons.
A problem common to many prior art arrangements is their inability to test for “soft kill” defences. The principle of “soft kill” defences is shown in FIG. 3. A ship 30 is provided and a missile launched from a launch site 32 along trajectory 34 that initially is targeted at the ship 30. Once the missile is detected by the ship 30, a decoy 36 is deployed. The decoy could take many different forms as is well known in the art. The purpose of the decoy is to convince the missile's guidance systems that the decoy 36 is in fact the ship 30. Thus, the missile's trajectory 34 is adjusted so that the missile is directed towards the decoy 36.
Pre-programmed missiles such as that described with reference to FIG. 2 are simply unable to react to soft-kill defences; thus, they cannot be used to test the effectiveness of such defences.
The present invention seeks to address at least some of the problems identified above.